Great Swampi Marcus 7

Taylor:  Oh, Swampi, you shouldn't let your fans see you yawning.  They'll think you're boring.  Or should that be they'll think they're boring?  Whichever, you shouldn't let anyone see you yawn in public. 

Marcus:  I'm not yawning.  I'm the Great Swampi, hear me roar!  What do you have for me this week?

Taylor:  Barking from the Bayou asked, "Do you know how to avoid bath time? I think we would all love to hear that advice.

Marcus:  I would love to hear that advice too.  I roll in the dirt and evidently a mushroom cloud of dust arises from me whenever I scratch or am petted, so I see a bath in my own near future.

Taylor:  Molly T. of The Fast and the Furrie needs some help.  "I'm hoping you can come up with a way to get Mom to play soccer with me more often than twice a day."

Marcus:  If your mom works for green papers, you could get her fired and then she would have lots more time to play soccer with you.  That's not a good idea, though, because you have become accustomed to eating regularly and I'm sure your mom has too.  Perhaps you could learn to play soccer by yourself for when she's not available.  Better yet, I have the same problem.  Perhaps we could play soccer together.

Taylor:  From Team Beaglebratz with Lady Shasta, "Can u tell me y it hazta rain so much? I NEED my walkiez an'me an'mom don't like bein'in the rain. An'mom sez I NEED my walkiez so I can loze weight. Mom already haz me on a diet."

Marcus:  It has to rain so much so we furries can get all wet and muddy and come into the house and dry ourselves off on the bed and other furniture and track mud all through the house. Our humans love that about us.  Jan is always praising us with, "Thanks a LOT for making a mess!"

Taylor:  Loulou asked in a post on her blog, "Oh, Great Swampi, can you give me a potion that will keep The Public from fawning over me all the time?"  (Her mama and papa are "The Public".) 

Marcus:  There is such a potion that will stop the fawning but it will net you a bath.  If you're desperate and want to try it, though, just roll in some Castor Oil mixed well with cayenne pepper.

Taylor:  You might remember our Friday post on the exploding bed?  (An Innocent BySleeper)  This question is from Pooh and Her Pooch blog.  "Was it a comfy bed after the explosion?"

Marcus:  Since it was my bed that Merci destroyed, I can tell you with certainty that is is NOT a comfy bed now.  In fact, Merci moved out of my crate and into a bed she previously considered too small and uncomfortable and is now working on making that one explode too.

Taylor: She's good!  I wonder if the military could use another demolition expert?


Do any of you use the Firefox browser?  We have been trying for several months to leave a comment on two Typepad blogs we used to visit without a problem.  We have gone round and round with their support.  We have no problem leaving a comment anywhere else.  There is nothing wrong with either blog or with our browser, but the "post" icon stays grayed out so we can not comment.  Typepad insists we are the only one with a problem. We just updated to FF version 52.  Could you take a minute to see if you can leave a comment on either or both of these blogs and let us know how you make out?  Thank you!!!

The Opinionated Pussycat.

The Poodle and Dog Blog.

Size and Colors

Merci:  Since we blog, we'd like to talk about blogging today. 

Cyndi:  Yes, we can make our blog be anything we want it to be.

Cameron:  And that makes us happy.  But we also have to consider our readers and make them happy too.

Micah:  Blog readers are like guests in our home.  We want them to feel at home and be comfortable.

Percy:  Oh, Jan says to tell you, if we're going to invite you all to visit our blog, to remind you to wipe the mud off your paws before you enter.

Sam: We all try to make our blog as inviting as possible.  A fun thene, an interesting background, lots of photos, and so forth.

Rusty:  But sometimes we overlook something important and discourage readers.  Your choice of fonts and text colors are every bit as important as an eye-catching blog banner and background.

Buddy:  Yes, sadly, we have visited a number of blogs where we struggle to read the very small text or the fat, light color whirly font, or the small gray text that fades into the background and is sometimes impossible to read, even with a magnifying glass, or .... You get the idea.

Marcus:  I happen to have great eyesight, so I don't have any problem yet.  But the Funny Farmers are older and can't see as well as I can.  A number of other bloggers are older and have vision problems. Even some of the younger bloggers do.

Percy:  A reader doesn't feel very welcome and might not return when, for whatever reason, he (or she) can't read the blog post you worked so hard to publish.

Buddy:  We don't have any particular blogs in mind as we write this.  We just know we've been running into more we can't read. Too small, too light text is a visit-breaker. The colors you choose for all of your fonts, including the hover and visited links, can mean the difference between your posts being legible and being unreadable.

Cyndi: And even if a visitor has good eyesight, he could have eyestrain from too many hours on the computer trying to make a living.  Help him relax and enjoy his visit on your blog.  Take an honest look at your blog and imagine yourself as a visitor.  How legible is your text?

Cameron:  If we haven't visited your blog as often as we once did, please don't assume this is why.  There are currently nine of us to wait on and provide for and Jan isn't getting any younger.  It takes her longer to do anything, and we only get "leftover" computer time.Many days she is on the computer from early morning until late at night and we barely get an opportunity to do a fast post.

Rusty:  We have been trying to make our blog a happy, fun place to visit.  We hope you will keep coming back. And if you ever have a problem reading our text, let us know.
 

Marcus:  To close with a smile, here's a recycled photo of Jan photographing some treats before giving them to us dogs.  And there I am photobombing the shot - again.  Jan used to find my eyes and ears in most of the photos she took. I really am photogenic, aren't I!

Mousebreath Auditions A Success

Hey, Cameron here.  I'd like to do an update on our recent  Mousebreath casting call. But first, I'd like to remind you, if you haven't read yesterday's interview of the lovely Purrime Ministerettes Shiva & Jaya yet, please go meet them now.  Don't worry, I'll wait.

Okay, now that you're back, I'll give you the update.

When we posted the Casting Call for Mousebreath interviews, we were pleasantly surprised at the response.  We were afraid you'd all be too shy to volunteer or suggest another blogger. But we now have a list that will carry us through the next however many (we didn't count) weeks. A good variety of blog personalities - from old friends right down to a brand new mama blogger with babies. We hope you will all bear with us.  We will interview all of these.

Since it will take us some time to get through the list, we thought we'd introduce you to the newer bloggers, new to us anyway.  If you haven't already met them, we hope you will stop by and introduce yourselves. 

Nermal, a farm kitty with babies is brand new to the blogging world.

Complete with Cats and Dogs is written about the pets by the human, but the pets write their own funny blog on Tumbler called Dogs and Cats Texting.

Sam's Scratching Post opened this month.

Cheshire Loves Karma is new to us, but some of you might be familiar with it.

Swiss Cat Blog is written in French with an English translation below it.

Yes, our Mousebreath auditions were a success and we can't wait to get to know more about all those who came so we can share their stories with you.  Thanks.

Surprise for Jan and CB Auction

 Hey, Percy here with some good news.

We Funny Farmers held a meeting and decided we all feel a twinge of guilt because we couldn't afford to get Jan a present for Christmas, and although we tried - we really tried to be good for just that one day, we didn't quite manage to.

We wanted to do something nice for her but we were stumped until my nimble paws found the perfect belated gift for Jan. She's always complaining Sam and Buddy "killed" her mattress and it's so uncomfortable for her to sleep on it any more. We find it very comfortable, but if it's a problem for her, we decided we'll see what we can do to make her happy.

While I was window shopping on the internet yesterday, I found some neat beds.

Merci and Cameron thought a nice round one would do but Cotton pointed out that we'd have to buy at least 3 or 4 for Jan since she's much taller than any of us, except Sam when he stands on his hind legs, and her bones creak when she tries to curl up in a ball like we often do when we sleep. Well, actually, it's more like they creak when she tries to uncurl from a ball.

Cyndi and Rusty suggested we get her a long mattress and bed in one. The longest is only 5' long, though. Her feet would hang over. We considered buying one long and one small but we're not sure how we're going to pay for one, so two is definitely out of the question. She could always wear a couple extra pairs of socks in the winter.

Getting Jan a new mattress bed would be the perfect solution for all of us. Jan could sleep on her new bed in the living room in front of the gas space heater and Sam, Buddy, me and whatever furries wanted to could squeeze onto her old bed.

Jan is going to be so excited when the new pet bed .... um, the new mattress bed arrives. We can order it just as soon as we figure out how to pay for it. Wonder if Jan has any money in her wallet yet? Excuse us, we need to go check.

The Furriends of The Cat Blogosphere Auction to help Mom Paula with Truffle's lady surgery has started.   If you'd like to help spread the word, grab the graphic above or from our sidebar.  Truffle blogs at Sweet Purrfections. 

Jan redecorated our blog recently and she redecorated the auction blog yesterday.  She's available to help redecorate your blog  - header and/or background - or make a graphic such as this one for Truffle for a donation to our Food & Fitness Fund.

Noms Exercise and Google

Hey, Cyndi here.  Happy Caturday.  We have a funny video for you today, a puppy demonstrating the art of eating and exercising at the same time.  We figure the idea is to burn off the calories as eaten to keep the lean puppy figure.  Watching this not only made us hungry, but tired!


If the video doesn't play, click here.

 Now, we (all us Funny Farmers) would like to get serious for a moment.  Many of you are aware that for some time Blogger blogs have been suddenly deleted for no reason - supposedly for suspicious activity (spam) - and the blog owner has had to request a review and hope the blog reappears soon, even though not in violation of any TOS (terms of service). 

Yesterday "Old Kitty" and Charlie's blog was suddenly deleted.  Now you can't get any more innocuous content than they post.  There is nothing untoward or spammy about their blog.  It has been restored, but what we learned yesterday deeply disturbs us. 

You see, for some reason they could only request a review by giving a mobile (cell) phone number.  When they tried to use the drop down box for their landline number, they were told the number didn't fit the mobile format.  In other words, the only way they could communicate with Google/Blogger was to receive a text message on the cell phone they don't have. 

For months Jan was pestered by Google to give a home phone or cell phone number for 2 step protection, to retrieve her password, for blog identity protection or whatever.  She ignored the requests until she got disgusted and gave them her home LANDLINE phone number.  She didn't think any more about it until yesterday.

She started checking the settings in her two Google accounts.  Not blogs, Google accounts, there's a difference - your blog is part of a Google account but the Google account covers gmail, Blogger, Picasa (and yes, if you have a Google account, you DO have a Picasa account!) and all the other Google-related  applications.  From our understanding and reading, if Google closes your blog, it closes everything related to that Google account.

Jan was shocked to find a reference to her account using text verification, but she doesn't have a cell phone!  So she started digging around in settings and found Google had taken her LANDLINE phone # and marked it as a mobile number to receive text messages. There was no option for a landline, mobile only!  So if something happened to our blog, we would have been in the same boat Old Kitty and Charlie were in yesterday,.  No way to contact Google.  Jan deleted the phone #  and hopes if something happened to her account, Google would use her recovery address. 

Some of you are no more tech-oriented than our Jan, so we're going to explain how to check your settings to be sure you won't have this problem. We don't know whether you are using the old or new dashboard, but there is a means from each to access your settings.  In the new dashboard, just click on the name of your blog in the upper right and click on Account Settings in the drop down menu.  That will take you to Google accounts.

Click on Recovering Your Password.

Email: check your email address.  Do you have a recovery address in case you are using gmail and the gmail has been deleted?  You need a non-gmail address. 

SMS:  This is where your cell # goes if you have one so they can text you a password reset code if necessary. 

Security question: If you haven't set up a security question, this would be a good time to.

If you made changes, click SAVE, if none, click CANCEL to return to your personal settings. 

Now for the part that really upset Jan.  She read a lot of information yesterday that says to open a gmail account now you have to give a cell phone # for verification.  This sound innocent.  Especially when they say it is to cut down on spammers opening blogs and a mobile phone is more reliable than an email address because you keep your phone with you.   But they add, if you don't have a mobile phone, ask a friend to use their cell number to get your verification code. 

Jan read that and said if Google closes her account and tries to blackmail her into doing that, her blog and email will remain deleted.  Because she neither knows anyone who would let her give Google their cell number, nor would she ask anyone to do so. This could cause problems down the road.  We know that once that number went into Google's records, it would be associated with Jan's personal information and never be deleted from Google's files.

We found an interesting article on Gmail SMS verification details and reasons, 

Have a great weekend!  Oh, in case you didn't notice, we asked Jan to give our blog a makeover.  We hope you like it. 

RIP Claudette and 3 Perf

Did anyone notice anything strange on our blog yesterday?  Like a missing background picture?

When we got online our background was missing.  So were a number of your blog headers and photos.  We couldn't see our background so figured Blogger must have somehow deleted it, so we deleted it from Picasa, and all Thursday we saw a white background.  Last night we finally thought to right click and we found out all the missing photos around the blogs were being blocked by our antivirus.  Evidently when we updated yesterday morning, a setting was changed and it was kind of hard to see some photos because they might harm our computer.  Say what? .

This morning we heard from the av company,  made a slight change and suddenly on our blog we were looking at a black background with big triangles and an exclamation point in the middles. (Means missing photo, we think.)  So, what did you see when you looked at our blog yesterday - a white background or a weird black one?

We were going to write the above and then just post what we'd already finished below.  But then we had some very sad news!

Posted on Facebook, "The Lord has called our dear friend Claudette Hudson home today."  Even though we knew this day was coming, reading the words was a shock. 

Claudette Hudson and Rocky. 

This photo was used for Claudette's 2010 Livestrong post. She's also used it for her birthday and for a FB profile photo, so we don't think she would mind us sharing it here to honor her - a Christian, a dog blogger, an animal lover, a cancer fighter for several years, and a friend to all. Even when she was unable to keep up the Hudson Furkids blog, she kept up with friends on FB and helped others as she could.

She was loving and courageous.  And she will most definitely be missed!  Rest in peace, dear Claudette.

We are teary and saddened that 3 Perf's had to be helped to the brdige last night.  He has been battling lymphoma and it was time for him to join his brothers Winton and Kokak, a mere 2 months after his family lost Kokak.  This is a very hard time for his mom!  You can visit and leave a comment here.

Most all of you already know Perfectly Parker has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer in her tummy.   We were as shocked as any other when the news was posted and still can barely believe it.  We know her family is giving her lots of love and quality time.  They need lots of support.  You can visit Parker here.

And Possum's sister Pixie has been very sick too.  She has been going to the vet to get infusions.  We hope yesterday's little bit of good news will keep getting better.  You can visit her here.

We know that's a lot of bad news at one time, but that's the way this week has gone. 

Teamwork

Hey, Cameron here. I have a great example of animal teamwork to show you today. Human kids aren't the only species that get themselves into dangerous situations and need to be rescued. In this instance a group of female elephants save a baby elephant from drowning.


If the video doesn't play, click here. 

Some of you know Sheldon the Cat. We don't know whether you're aware his family - Sheldon, Pika the kitty, and humans Cathy and Robert - started a new blog called Cuddle Like Crazy. Stop by and visit.

Tree Climbing Goats of Morocco

We've had this video ready to post for a while and we're finally getting around to it.  It's on the tree climbing goats of Morocco.  Yep, you read that correctly.  Tree climbing goats.  What a sight! 


If the video doesn't play, click here.

The other day we posted on how to make it easier for others to leave a comment on your Blogger blog. We suggested making your comments open in a popup box. This works for most, but we've had a couple of comments that some bloggers have made this change and there is still a problem.

So we're going to add this from The Real Blogger Status blog regarding the disappearance of comments in relation to 3rd party cookies.

And this one on excessive filtering of web content which causes another problem. 

Overly aggressive security and blocked authentication cookie.

The need for authentication cookie to make your Blogger experience less frustrating and more fruitful.

And Blog Owners Unable To Stay Logged In, To Edit Or Post To Their Blogs.

All of these links are from The Real Blogger Status blog. This is a very good resource for learning about Blogger blog problems and solutions. Sometimes you can find the answer without having to post your problem on a Blogger help forum. You can search their site from the sidebar to find helpful information.

As far as we know the problems have been for those using Internet Explorer and Firefox and Chrome have not been having a problem using any of the 3 comment forms. We're not techies, but we've come across so many frustrated bloggers who can't comment on some blogs that we're just trying to point out some help topics.

We hope those experiencing comment problems can find the solutions they need. Are you or your readers using IE and experiencing problems with a particular comment form? Are you or your readers using a browser other than IE (Firefox, Chrome, Opera) and experiencing problems?

Visiting other blogs is no fun when frustrated. We wish you all a happy blog commenting experience.

Cotton on Comments and Kodiak

Hey, this is Cotton. For a while I thought you'd have to take my word for it since Blogger wouldn't post my picture. And suddenly it posted my photo three times (yes, three, but better than the 28 or whatever we had to delete one day).

Anyway, I have some news and a request for those who use Blogger and some sad news of a friend.

After all the work Milo and Alfie did to organize Livestrong Day among us furry bloggers, they were frustrated to the max yesterday trying to leave comments on blogs to thank others for participating.  They finally had to give up.

So yesterday we put a message directly above our posts and since it will come down eventually, we're going to put the information in this post too.  We are not having a problem leaving comments, but many are.  So, please, if your Blogger blog is not using popup comments, we implore you to change your comment form.

To help other bloggers -

Dashboard

Settings

Comments
   Comment Form Placement
      Pop Up Window
 
Scroll down and click Save Settings

That's it, you're done.  And many a blogger will thank you!


We were stunned to learn about the handsome Kodiak of the Thundering Herd yesterday.  He had to be helped to the bridge Sunday.  No one ever expects to have a dog collapse while away from home on vacation, but that's what happened while Kodiak was walking on the beach Friday.  Suddenly he couldn't walk and had to be carried.  He was a Sibe (Siberian Husky), big and heavy to pick up.  He was to a vet as fast as they could get him to one. 

It's a very sad story and you can read about it on The Thundering Herd blog, as well as leave a word of comfort.

And hug your furry (furries) today.  There is no guarantee we'll still have them tomorrow.  

Buddy Intros Dog and Ginger

 Hey, Buddy here.  We just had a t-storm pass through.  We don't like lightning but we did need the rain.  I just came out from where I was hiding  uh, napping under the desk to do today's post.

We have another fun video for you today.   A goggle-wearing, motorcycle riding dog named Dog.  His human friend traded a beer for him.  Guess who got the best of that deal?  Yep!


If the video doesn't play, click here.


We'd like to mention 2 things we've read about lately but can't remember where to find the info. We'll just recap them for you.

1) We hope you are not storing your blog photos or personal photos in Picasa without having a backup copy elsewhere, either on your computer, on CDs or DVDs, or on a separate drive. If something goes wrong or if your gmail or google blog is closed, your photos will go with them. And even if your account is reinstated by you or google, you might not get your photos back.

(The same goes for gmail. We can remember about 3 or 4 years or so ago when Jan opened a gmail account and a blog for the local Humane Society. When she tried to send the officers the new email address, she found the new account had already been flagged for "suspicious activity." She was dumbfounded. There hadn't been any activity yet, except for a couple of test emails to herself to make sure the account was set up correctly. It turned out there had been a glitch and all new accounts were locked as "suspicious." It took Google a couple of days or so to take the lock off the account.)

Mistakes do happen. So please don't depend solely on Picasa to store your photos.

2) Sooner or later Blogger is going to end support of the old HTML templates and there are still a number of Blogger blogs using them. The new templates are so much easier to work with and to make changes to. We like the new ones because we're not techies but we can create our own background and change the look of our blogs at whim. So if you haven't updated your template since opening your blog a few years ago, we suggest you go to the Design page, click on Template Designer, and check out the new system. don't wait till the last minute and end up in a panic.

3) UPDATE: Okay, better make that 3 things.  Ayla, Iza & Marley just left a comment reminding us before long Blogger will be switching everyone to the new interface.  And we still haven't figured out how to maneuver around that  so we keep reverting to the old one.   We do need to remember to check it out occasionally so we can let Blogger know what we do or don't like, what does or doesn't work about it.

Well, how about this. Zoolatry just sent out this graphic this morning for poor Ginger and just now we discovered her problem has been resolved. But she could still use purrs and wags that this doesn't recur. Ginger is from the Cory Cat blog.

Merci Intros Twig

Hey, it's Merci here today. Have you met Twig? I think she's wonderful. I said I'd like to learn to do the things Twig does - skateboarding, boogieboarding and skinboarding - but Jan says we don't live near the ocean so that leaves out two of the three activities. And since we have a leash law here, she's not too sure she could run as fast as I could skateboard, especially down steps.

So I guess I won't be able to have fun on a board. Unless I can convince Jan to take up skateboarding, too, so she can keep up with me. But there isn't much chance of that. I think we've mentioned before that Jan is a klutz. And ancient. But I can watch Twig's videos and dream.


If the video doesn't play, click here.

I  need to mention that we added an update to our Tuesday post on deleting blogrolling and MyBlogLog because both closed a while back and are now causing problems for those who still have links to them in their sidebar.

Thursday Update: We should probably add that the easiest way to delete all links to either blogrolling or MyBlogLog, which are not the same thing, is to delete their widget from your sidebar. But we assumed that if you hadn't done that already, you don't know which widget was which. (Some of you have more than one link list in your sidebar.)

Or you could follow the instructions in The Real Blogger Status from yesterday. We read it and we're still trying to figure out what it says.

Cotton Says to Bury the Code

Hey, Cotton here. We weren't going to post today but we just found something we'd like to share with you.

Some of you are aware there has been a problem with some blogs lately. Strange things have been happening. We noticed on a couple of blogs the other day that when we tried to visit the blog was immediately switched to an error page with a really long blogrolling url.

Strange, blogrolling shut down a while back. Then last night we were looking through the code of a blog with a problem and found MyBlogLog links still in the sidebar. MyBlogLog was a Yahoo "social network" site. We belonged to it but it closed down in May and we removed all the related code from our blog. Evidently, some bloggers forgot to remove the code for one or the other site from their sidebar.

The reason we suddenly decided to post tonight is because we just tried to visit some old friends who haven't blogged in a few months and were switched to another site. And a lightbulb switched on in my head. The site we were switched to is advertising blogrolling dot com for sale.

It took a few tries but our nimble pawed Percy managed to reach the source code and check it. There were six blogrolling links left on the blog. Fortunately, we have an email address for the blogger, so we notified them. And now we'd like to notify you. If you ever had blogrolling dot com or MyBlogLog in your sidebar and haven't deleted them, you need to do so now. If you can't remember whether you had it or if you deleted it, it's easy to check and correct if you have a Blogger blog.

Go to the main page of your blog.  Not the dashboard; you want to view the actual blog. 

Right click on a portion of the blog that is clear - no photo or links.
Click on "View Page Source."
A new window will open.
Upper left or your screen: Click on "Edit" and then on "Find."


A little bar will appear in lower left of your screen.
In the Find box, type "blogrolling."
If blogrolling is found, click "next" to find all references.

Then repeat the search for "MyBlogLog."

If "blogrolling" or "MyBlogLog" links are found, you will need to go into your blog template and delete each "blogrolling" reference. Before you do this, be sure to save a copy of your template on your computer. Or ask someone who knows how to do this and you trust to do it for you.

I'm not a schoolteacher and I'm not a computer nerd - just the oldest sibling here - so I hope this isn't confusing. If we cats and dogs can figure it out, it must be fairly easy.

But if you've been blogging for a while and ever belonged to either blogroll group, you can save yourself and your visitors a lot of frustration by checking your blog code. Because, believe me, none of us want to come by and get switched to another page. We really don't care that blogrolling dot com is for sale. Or that MyBlogLog will probably also be soon. We just want to see your furry faces.  Cause we love you.

Thursday Update: We should probably add that the easiest way to delete all links to either blogrolling or MyBlogLog, which are not the same thing, is to delete their widget from your sidebar. But we assumed that if you hadn't done that already, you don't know which widget was which. (Some of you have more than one link list in your sidebar.)

Or you could follow the instructions in The Real Blogger Status from yesterday. We read it and we're still trying to figure out what it says.

Momo, Labor of Love and Red Flags

Hey, Cyndi here. Jan is running in circles mumbling about being behind something or other (we know it isn't us because we're keeping out of her way) and needing to get the computer back to play catchup. We don't understand the rush. If she's just going to play a game, why can't we keep the computer?

Uh-oh, she's circling closer. Better hurry up and get this finished.

Today is "Granny" Momo's Birthday/Gotcha Day and she's having a weekend party at her place. She will make a donation to the Cat Protection Society for each visitor. So stop by and leave a comment to help the CPS.

Momo is at least 14 years old, so let's help her celebrate in style. Visit her at the Meow blog.

This is also Labor of Love for ML (of the Cat Blogosphere and Missy Blue Eyes' blog) weekend, so stop by and let her know you appreciate all she does.

There have been a number of blogs red flagged and blocked lately.  If you see Reported Attack Page, click on "Why was this page blocked?" in the red banner.  This will explain the problem.  Basically, one or more blogs were hacked and  distributing malware and any blog with a blogroll linked to the hacked blog also gets red flagged.  Deleting the link should solve the problem but a number of us have just deleted our blogrolls at least temporarily. 

After deleting the link, clear your cache (we would delete cookies too) and then go to your own blog as a visitor.  If the red flag is still there, you will need to go to your dashboard to webmaster tools and let Blogger know so they can check and clear the red flag. 

FYI, it's a whole lot easier to contact a blocked blog if other bloggers have your email address since your comments are blocked too.  We found a means to leave a comment on a red flagged blog without actually visiting there but received no response.  Folks can't let you know there's a problem if they can't contact you.  So pretend you're old and feeble and need let others know how to check on you in an emergency. 

Popping in and out

We're just going to do a quick newsy post today.  We know there is a lot more news and more hurricane Irene information on the blogs, but we haven't been able to visit as many as we'd like, so we'll just post on a couple of things that caught our attention today.


Autumn and Jasmine explain why they have been quiet for a while. There has been much sadness in their personal lives, as they have lost furry relatives and friends, as well as some very bad animal-related things going on where they live in Malaysia. They could use a kind word or two, so please stop by Autumn & Jasmine's Playground.

The Creek Cats posted a video of the hurricane passing through their area. It does not show the high winds that rocked their home at 3:30 am Saturday morning.

The Cat Street Boyz have some photos of the rushing water they can hear from their house.

Prayers are still needed for those affected by hurricane Irene over the weekend.   Many are still without electricity., in a flooded area or have other damage to contend with.  Khyra is one of those still without power, most likely because of a tree on a line. 

Hope you all have a great day!

Zoolatry Human and Poppy Vic

As many of you are already aware, Poppy Vic from Zoolatry is starting chemotherapy again. This is a hard time for the entire family and they are very much in our prayers.

About a week ago Jan made this graphic for Ann & Vic and we posted it in our sidebar. If you would like to use it, please feel free to do so. Ann has been such a help to so many bloggers and we would like to help encourage them through this. The link to their blog is http://zoolatry.blogspot.com/.

We are updating this post to include a warning about counterfeit Frontline purchased from online stores that can kill your pet.

Amber's 9 Dog Review

 

Hey, Sam here. As you can see, I'm still laughing at a post we just read.

In July we did a review on Innova pet food. Amber da Weenie was one of two winners of a coupon for a free bag of Innova. Today she posted her review of the product and we got such a kick out of it and the included video, we decided to make it our post for the day. We know you will enjoy it.

So, much as we hate to see you go, please go visit Amber da Weenie's blog. It will make you smile.

Lulu, Lolly, Willyum and Molly

Hey, Buddy here, with some good and bad news..

We keep forgetting to mention our old friends Lulu and Lolly are blogging again after a time away. Unfortunately, it's now Lulu, Willyum & Molly and "angel" Lolly. We were aware Lolly was ill but hoped for a better outcome. We're sad for her loss. Her family misses her.

If you remember Lulu and Lolly, stop by their blog and say hello. If you've never met them before, stop by their blog and say hello, nice to meet you. We enjoy their posts and sense of humor. .   

It's a bit confusing, though, how they could ask for guppies for Christmas and Santa bring them puppies.  If Santa is getting senile, I will gladly volunteer to drop down chimneys to deliver packages if Jan will let me eat all the cookies and drink all the glasses of milk left for Santa.

Uh, Jan heard me mumbling as I type and yelled, NO WAY!  You can not have all that sugar and milk!  I can't imagine why she thinks they would give me diaree ... diarie ... the poops.

Cotton's PSA and Decision

Hey, I'm Cotton. Sorry, but I fell asleep while waiting to use the computer. And it's been a long wait, but Jan finally made a decision.

First though, a Public Service Announcement from Zoolatry. Ann has a very good post on why many blog readers would appreciate it if the the word verification found on many blogs would be disabled and why it can be a hardship for those with a disability. Jan has health problems that are affected by her computer time too and she has been glad to be spending more time away from the computer lately.

We can't speak for other blogs, such as Wordpress, but Blogger has been doing a terrific job of filtering out spam for quite a while now. It has become rare that a spam message gets through and has to be deleted from a post or that a good message ends up in with spam. But bloggers have to do their part. It's easy. Just go to comments in your dashboard (check them occasionally if you choose not to receive email notifications) and check/clear your spam folder.

An easy way to keep up with what is posted on your blog and what is not is to have Blogger send an email for each new comment. If the email asks whether permission to post or delete, that comment has not been posted, so you just delete it from the Blogger spam folder nest time you think of it. But you have to keep your email address current. Just go to -

Dashboard.
Comments.
Scroll down to "Comment Notification Email" and type in your email address.
Click Save Settings.

But before you save your settings, you might want to change "Who Can Comment" to only registered users. We used to allow anonymous comments because we have non-blogging friends, but since many spammers try to post a comment as Anonymous, we finally had to change the setting.

We understand why many of you use word verification but as Ann points out, there is also the problem of time, often having to do two or more verifications, as some are almost impossible to read. A big problem for us is that we have the slowest DSL and way too frequently, there is such a delay, we think our comment went through, but as we are already leaving the site we glimpse word verification appearing. So we either wasted our time making the comment or we have to go back and do it again.

We thank Zoolatry for her Disable for the Disabled graphic and for the post. We don't know that all of you will be able to disable word verification for one reason or another but we hope at least many of you can.

Our last post was to let you know where we were with our blog at the time, but so many left advice on what to do with stolen content, which was not the problem, so we took the post down.

We were trying to warn you about a site using hundreds or thousands of bloggers RSS feed posts to steal your traffic - not steal your post - to boost their own traffic in search engine rankings - and to get visitors to download a program. All bloggers should be doing a periodic Google search of your own blog name. Don't search for this company, as you will only increase their their "popularity," but if you see brokencontrollers.com/yourblog name, you might want to ask them to remove each of your posts and links from their site. Which they will do but you have to notice them and make the request.

Their are many reasons a blogger needs or wants a domain name. But we will never own JFF dot com again. It wasn't because Jan didn't try to pay them for the domain names. They just kept refusing to accept her payment.

As long as we keep posting on JFF, our old dot com will be following us and can be resold. Today it is owned by a foreign company and it's all ads. Tomorrow it could be purchased by a porn site. Jan really wants to end JFF so this can't ever happen, but she just doesn't have the time or energy to start over and try to build up a new blog, a new zazzle store, Twitter, and everything we're signed up with. And Jan has been busy trying to downsize as we might have to move.

Reluctantly and with trepidation, this blog stays open, but we're going to have to find a new heart for it.

Stop right here. And read the last line again. The way it was written, not the way you are expecting it to read. Please.

Merci with Correct Address

Merci here to help some who lost us to find us again.

Our correct url is http://jansfunnyfarm.blogspot.com/ Anyone who still has us listed anywhere in their records as jansfunnyfarmDOTcom, please delete that url from any of your records. Our blog remains but it's not forwarded from our own url any more.

In February of this year Jan lost two of her DotCom addresses. Jan's Funny Farm was one of them. She tried to use the same method she used for six successful years and her payment was denied. She was given excuses: it's the bank's fault, you've purchased too many products from us within a short period.... There was no problem with the bank. An annual renewal is too many products in a short period? After being given a runaround for more than a week, she was given a contact number to reach a human.

But first, she did her homework online and was already aware what would happen. Sure enough, she was read a script about how she does NOT have any bad history but if she'll just fill out one of the forms for the company that has to approve payments and submit it online, her payment MIGHT be accepted.

No company needs to know the kind of detailed financial information the company demanded on their form. Jan refused to be "bullied" into divulging so much personal information, especially to a company whose employee sold what little information they had of hers back in 2007.

The domain registration company called her to "help." They suggested she get a prepaid credit card for the exact amount of the fees and then cancel the card. She rejected that idea on several grounds, one being she would have ended up paying twice as much for the urls. She had tendered a perfectly good payment and it had been rejected, so they don't need her business.

The domain names were canceled and she waited to see what would happen. Two or three weeks ago she was contacted by a company offering to sell each of her domain names to her because she has blogs by those names. Recently, while changing the url in different locations, she found the old DotCom is now an advertisement page. Who knows what it could be tomorrow? There are those who buy up domain names for sites still posting current content to try to sell them for inflated prices.

So, please, do use http://jansfunnyfarm.blogspot.com/. Don't help the new owner of our old DotCom make any money off the domain name. And we hope those who thought we closed the blog when the DotCom address stopped working will find us again.

Rusty Reports News

Rusty here with today's news.We have some good news, some sad news and some news on Blogger you might not have heard yet.

This video shows one happy dog, rescued after surviving the tsunami in Japan and spending three weeks floating on wreckage at sea.


If the video doesn't play, click here.

We are happy for the rescue of this dog, but very sad for those who have lost a human loved one or have one or more family members missing - and/or a pet or pets. There are so many missing and they are presumed dead.

As many of you are aware, the Cat Blogosphere has been holding an auction for Shell's medical bills. Sadly, her rescuer MA had to make the hard decision to end her suffering and let her go yesterday. She had a bad start in life but her last days were filled with love.

Oh, and by the way, for those of you who use Blogger and haven't yet heard, Google has signed an agreement to purchase Blogger. You can read about it here.

When Jan opened this blog she understood that Google already owned Blogger, so this news was a surprise.  After reading Kea's comment, we went back to Blogger and checked the About Us page.  And we found this posted there -

Things were going well again in 2002. We had hundreds of thousands of users, though still just a few people. And then something no one expected happened: Google wanted to buy us. Yes, that Google. We liked Google a lot. And they liked blogs. So we were amenable to the idea. And it worked out nicely.  Now we're a small (but slightly bigger than before) team in Google focusing on helping people have their own voice on the web and organizing the world's information from the personal perspective. Which has pretty much always been our whole deal.

So if Google bought Blogger back in 2002, how is Google buying Blogger in 2011? Don't ask us. We're just furries. We were hoping you might know. :)

(It was an April Fool joke.)